Chiptune VideoCast

[xhunterko]

Hey everyone!

I started my own videocast this week on youtube. I have only about 3 videos right now. The third is being processed actually. I don't know if you guys listen to chiiptune/video game music or not. Here's a linkie to the third one though.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ab7FR3GRJM

Some say I'm too loud, others can't hear me. How's the voice on this?

[Gil]

You don't smile, we can't see your face and you don't speak out.

It's not about volume, but you tend to mumble a lot. Try adjusting body position, you can't speak clearly when you're hunched like that.

I know it's criticism, just trying to help out of course

[xhunterko]

I'm camera shy and I have scoliosis. Try and hold your arm up continuosly for awhile. It gets tiring. And not a problem. I'll try to speak up a bit more. I guess smiling helps too. Thanks for watching though!

[sakket]

i actually like the hat thing. I say you should try actually over-pronouncing your words and exaggerating your enthusiasm. It's good practice if you've fallen into a habit of being underwhelming. Plus you can always edit out mistakes. Also don't be afraid to move around!

[xhunterko]

@gil: "you can't speak clearly when you're hunched like that."

I did not realize that you were meaning my leaning over the keyboard, my bad.

@Sakket

I don't think that'll work for me. I'm not that good at acting. Though I did think about doing a voiceover change next episode. Squeaky maybe?
About the hat, I thought, nerd with a dorky hat on, not cool. A Talking hat, kinda cool.

Thanks guys!

(here's one and two if you'd like to see 'em:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZEejeDkVJao
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=557_uI4dJio)

[Gil]

I did not realize that you were meaning my leaning over the keyboard, my bad.

Yeah, I think it will help with intonation if you sit up straight.

About the shyness:

Get comfortable with the hat, then try it without.

When I was your age, I was pretty insecure. I forced myself to talk to a random stranger each day and not care what they think about me.
By my final year, I was chairman of the computer club, playing ball with the jocks every lunchbreak and I took a girl from the drama club to prom.

[Photocopier]

I did not realize that you were meaning my leaning over the keyboard, my bad.

Yeah, I think it will help with intonation if you sit up straight.

About the shyness:

Get comfortable with the hat, then try it without.

When I was your age, I was pretty insecure. I forced myself to talk to a random stranger each day and not care what they think about me.
By my final year, I was chairman of the computer club, playing ball with the jocks every lunchbreak and I took a girl from the drama club to prom.

YESMAN!

I agree with this advice.

[xhunterko]

"When I was your age"

cough, just a quick correction, i'm 27 cough

(not to be taken offesnively, some of my co-workers thought I was 17 until I showed them my id, if that's not what your thinking, ignore this altogether)

[Gil]

Hmm, I remembered you were a lot younger? Strange. Who is it that I'm thinking of?

You're about my age then. Sure. comments still apply

[xhunterko]

Nope, might my other behavior have something to do with that...  .
By the way, I'm going to have episode 4 ready to post later if you want to see it.

[xhunterko]

Episode 4 is up!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yeqw-QTo5K4

Did I improve a little this time?

[Gil]

Body language is a lot better.

For speech, you're still a bit nasal, try playing with breathing exercises and your voice in general. Maybe try a lower register?

Definately improvement though

[xhunterko]

I don't know if I sound like that naturally or if it's because of sinus. But I'll try to work on that a bit. Thanks for watching it though!

[Mathias]

Wear bright clothing. Spruce up that ol' medieval tapestry back-drop. To me, chiptunes are fun and light and not serious. I just think the vibe of your presentation could be molded better to reflect that. Though, you may not agree.

Don't like the long intro sequence at the beginning. I have to fast-forward to find you.

How about some formatted links in the video, either along the way, or at the end, to the artists you mention. The logical thing to do is go to their sites and DL their stuff after watching your vid, right?

[Jad]

To me, chiptunes are fun and light and not serious.

To me, string quartet music is downbeat and gloomy.

Of course it makes sense to generalize when most chiptunes indeed are upbeat, fun and light, since they come from an arcade game tradition of trying to draw in players with happy sounds, but all chiptunes won't be this way, and you can find utterly depressing ones if you want to as well - so your generalization still looks silly to me.

And yeah, that's all, I just wanted to be elitist

EDIT: also, I'm not really disqualifying your actual critique or anything - I love me some bright clothing and funness and lightness, so I like that suggestion. I'd have done it.

[HughSpectrum]

Or it could be based on the mood of the song that happens to be playing.

[Mathias]

heh, Jad. Obviously you're right. Maybe I was idealizing chiptoonz via my preferences. I do prefer the crazier faster more upbeat complex ones. Here's a perfect example. I want xhunterko's newscast to be the embodiment of that there!

[xhunterko]

Thanks again guys!

@Mathias: Why did you want to find me? The music is what the show's about. I wanted to cover the background last time actually, but nothing did the job properly. And I forgot about that site! Unfortunately, I can't use any of it because I think most of it's not free. Plus, the store is broken. I might try to shake it up with the intro though, just to see if I like it or not. For some downer songs check out this album: http://www.iimusic.net/catalog/2009/02/sea-of-ice , and this one: http://www.iimusic.net/catalog/2009/05/vegavox-2

@KittenMaster: Or it could be based on my budget?  (jk)

@jad: Exactly! Just becuase I might not like a certain style of music, doesn't mean other people won't. In fact, I'm going to have a show that plays music that has one annoying trend I've started to notice about chiptunes: voiceovers. Don't worry, your not being elitist.

Maybe I can borrow some clothes from John Arbuckle?

[Mathias]

@Mathias: Why did you want to find me? . . .

My thinking is that I can easily find music of any variety, even new, all on my own with some quick searches or checking known sites. Is this not how you are doing it? Unless you have informed connections I don't, we have the same capacity to expose new and old sounds for everyone, right? Therefore, what may interest me in watching your videos is your critiques and/or organized presentation of the subjects at hand. With things like this, I'm after the point of view/ the commentary. I see no reason to sit and listen to a whole track. I'd rather grab the whole album and listen to the whole thing as one piece, each track in it's rightful context, as I'd expect the artist intended - not at all implying there's anything wrong with playing one track at a time mind you.

I'm 27 too, btw, hmm.

I love that you're doing what you're doing, never expected it. Keep at it. And remember, you can't please everyone all the time.

[xhunterko]

@mathias: Well yes, but not everyone knows how to do that though. I'll definitely check out the embed link thingie.

Thanks for the positive feedback guys!

[Mathias]

@mathias: Well yes, but not everyone knows how to do that though. . .

I'll go out on a short and sturdy limb - If you like chiptunes, it's nearly a guarantee you're also computer saavy. Just a thought.

[xhunterko]

Fairly sturdy.

[Gil]

I'll go out on a short and sturdy limb - If you like chiptunes, it's nearly a guarantee you're also computer saavy. Just a thought.

Not true at all, most of my friends are into chiptunes and none of them are computer savvy. The DJs and producers tend to be major computer geeks though

[Mathias]

I'll go out on a short and sturdy limb - If you like chiptunes, it's nearly a guarantee you're also computer saavy. Just a thought.

Not true at all, most of my friends are into chiptunes and none of them are computer savvy. The DJs and producers tend to be major computer geeks though

If I had a quarter for all the times you've directly contradicted a statement I've made, I'd . . . have like enough for those new LCD's I been wantin'!   (ok, so my limb turns out to have once had a termite problem, and is actually dead as a result, therefore drastically reduced in it's virtual stuctural integrity, to such a degree that it is actually a little unsafe and probably shouldn't be 'gone out on' too far. I should've stayed hidden in the foliage.)

In response I'll say that your avatar is annoying. ESC key, thank you for your functionality. You should get one like mine, it's possibly the best avatar ever used here. I can make you one. I at least owe you that for all the quarters you've given me.
j/k
It kinda depends on your definition of "computer saavy". I don't mean genius programmer savants. I really just meant people that are knowledgeable enough to understand the web for the resource that it is and know how to take advantage of it - in this case, find chiptunes, download them, and know how to listen to them, perhaps even understand how to keep an organized folder structure to store the files in a way they're easy to find/listen to; sufficiently computer literate.
I reason that anyone that enjoys chiptunes probably enjoys video games, and as such most likely have a propensity for electronics, easily including computers + the web. Though, I'm in the central US and you're in Belgium. I wonder if there's a cultural difference in what we observe. Your point of view may not be valid for my chunk of the world, and vice versa for my point of of view. I think you also belong to a circle of friends very familiar with DJ'ing (I believe you yourself DJ from time to time) and parties, so your immediate clique may be abnormally exposed to chiptunes . . . or not? Just trying to determine the differences in our environments/perception of how much chiptune awareness there really is.

But now we're way off-topic, unless Xhunter considers the information good marketing research. I know he's about to launch a t-shirt line any second now, and he wants to know how many shirts to have screened initially.

[Gil]

I'll make this the last post on this, as it might be semi-topic as you mentioned.

First off, if I intimidate you by my behavior, just tell me to back off. I understand your reason and I'll give you that free card to avoid us both getting into pointless arguments. I think I like you in this community, but our visions on most things will be very different (maybe the cultural thing as you mention?).

That said, I'll clarify the chiptunes involvement.

In the UK, you have a whole scene involved with chiptunes. The scene started from the perspective of retro gamers, which are sometimes computer savvy, but not always (some just used to own a nintendo for example). The whole movement got broader, the computer savvy aspect was even more downplayed.

Off to Belgium, a country that is culturally very broad. We have some of the best music festivals in the world in a country the size of my back pocket. We invented new beat. We imported Techno from the USA (simplifying here). We have the European headquarters, were the original founders of European open trade, recently provided the first European president. We are a two hour train drive away from Paris, afternoon trip to London, 2 hour drive from Amsterdam, small trip to major German cities.

Basically, whatever music scene evolves in Europe, it tends to affect our little European hub (ask Helm and he'll say that Greece's location probably does the opposite). We don't have to search for underground music in Belgium, it's all around us. We now have a similar underground scene of chiptune lovers to the UK, with members coming off a second wave of punk and hardcore bands who got into drum & bass onto more eclectic genres (chiptunes, breakcore, etc). Punk kids don't make for the best computer experts usually, so that explains how the ultimate gamer genre was introduced to a new demographic.

As for me and music:

I am a DJ (rave and drum & bass mostly), not a very good one though. Lots of my friends happen to be prominent DJs and producers. I consider myself lucky in that aspect . I used to organize punk, metal and hardcore shows, which is were a lot of my current audience as a DJ comes from too (as I said, punk/D&B connection).

If you want to listen to what my influences are, check out this mix I made recently: http://soundcloud.com/djreminisce/reminisce-ravin-001


Sorry to xhunterko for derailing his thread.
As a present, I'll give you some obscure chiptunes soon, but I have to research my collection first.

[xhunterko]

Not a problem. Although so the mods don't notice anything wrong, here's a first quickie. My first video comment for bytejacker.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQgHZF4D6mg

http://www.bytejacker.com/

I'll post a new episode up should be tonight if your interested. Btw mathias, I was just wondering exactly where you get your chiptunes from? iimusic.net? ubiktune? calmdownkidder? 8bitcollective? 8bitpeople? Some other place I don't know about? I'm always looking for new stuff.

Good discussion guys.

[Gil]

Check out Swampy Boy on 8bit collective btw. He's awesome.

[xhunterko]

You just led me to a whole new netlabel. Holy cow and thanks!

http://www.sociopath-recordings.com/

And new show saturday. Can't get together tonight for some reason.

[7321551]

Is there a reason only modern chiptunes are being played/discussed? Just preference?

[xhunterko]

Aside from the fact that some classic video game chiptunes are still copyrighted? Unless your talking about something else I haven't found?

[7321551]

Ah, alright.
Well, copyright owners seem pretty lenient about chiptunes, judging by my own cursory searches on youtube for videogame soundtracks. Mostly Mega Drive era stuff, in my case.

[xhunterko]

No hat over the face this time gil. How do you like it?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7nwFnkik7iU

I still think I look like an idiot.

[Gil]

I really like it. Standing up does wonders for the posture, you talk out. You're getting it right.

For pointers, I'd say, more eye contact with the camera and maybe try to put the camera a little higher, because right now it's slightly below you.

Huge improvement though, good job

[Mathias]

(was offline [moved])

Ah, thanks for the info there, Gil. Pretty interesting! For the record, intimidation = 0%. Avatar Annoyance = 14.5%. Value rating of your input in this community = 89.2%.

Cyber high-five!

xhunter, when I get my speakers set back up, why I'll give episode #6 proper attention and give you some actual feedback.

[xhunterko]

Thanks much gil!

About the camera. I'll see what I can do about that. It's currently mounted into my laptop, so not a whole lot of control. I've been trying to work at looking at the camera more. I try to have my scriipt directly below my camera software so I can see it easily. By the way, I don't know if it should be right at my neck, or more at shoulder level. What do you think?

@mathias: I'll be looking forward to that!

[Gil]

The trick is to make it seem as though you're conversing with the guy on the other side of the screen. There's no rule as to where the camera should be I think. Try paying attention to some close-ups in movies and figure out which camera standpoints add which emotion and why.

[Conzeit]

I think  you should try talking to the camera unscripted. Maybe you could try doing a private video where you tell the camera things that matter to you....no scripts, do it as a kind of meditation...maybe then, when you do your show you feel like you already got to know the camera and can treat it more like a person

[xhunterko]

Thought I'd share this with you guys. Even though youtube for some reason didn't save my changes (grumble). I'll have to do all that over again later.

But aynyways, episode 8 is up, finally.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c119aNSq_mA